About My Father: A droll surprise

About My Father (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for suggestive material, mild profanity and partial nudity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Given Robert De Niro’s penchant for dumb comedies, this release was approached with a wary eye.

 

No need to worry.

 

Although Salvo (Robert De Niro, right) long ago promised a treasured family heirloom
when his son Sebastian (Sebastian Maniscalco) became ready to pop the question to a
True Love, this agreement comes with a hitch: Salvo first wants to meet his
son's fiancée's family.

Director Laura Terruso’s delightful little film is both hilarious and heartwarming, thanks to a sharply tuned script by star Sebastian Maniscalco and co-writer Austen Earl. They deftly avoid the numb-nuts slapstick that frequently infects such projects, while still including one side-splittingly bawdy set-piece that’s certain to go viral (and deservedly so).

An additional blessing: None of these characters resorts to screaming, or the tiresome hurling of breakable objects at each other. Disagreements and arguments, sure: even occasional raised voices … but it feels authentic, and not contrived.

 

This obviously results from Maniscalco’s input, relying on the “immigrant growing up in America” experience that he has honed so well in his stand-up act. He’s a natural born storyteller, particularly when it comes to his own story (or a somewhat, um, enhanced reading of same).

 

Sicilian-born Salvo (De Niro), a hard-working hairdresser, long ago moved his family to Chicago, in order to grant his son what all parents desire: better opportunities for their children. Sebastian (Maniscalco) has indeed thrived, rising to a coveted position within the city’s Hilton hotel chain. He also has fallen in love with budding artist Ellie (Leslie Bibb) — who possesses more enthusiasm than talent — and who adores him in return.

 

Their personalities are wildly different. He’s reserved and somewhat wary, content with his place in the universe. She’s open and ready for anything, cheerfully applying just the right pressure to occasionally take Sebastian out of his comfort zone (in good ways). Maniscalco and Bibb are adorable together.

 

The only remaining detail, in Sebastian’s mind, is the perfect when and where to pop The Question. He also requests his grandmother’s heirloom ring, which Salvo long ago promised his son could give to The One.

 

But Salvo is concerned. Ellie comes from a super-rich family with a palatial estate in Virginia (and at least one more home elsewhere). Her father, Bill Collins (David Rasche), is a captain of industry and CEO of a rival luxury hotel chain; her mother, the aptly named Tigger (Kim Cattrall) — because she has claws — is a firebrand, ultra-conservative U.S. Senator.

 

And while they’re both immigrant families, the Collins clan beat Salvo’s family to American shores by quite a few generations, having arrived on a modest little ship called The Mayflower.

 

How, Salvo worries, could Sebastian possible fit into their world? Worse yet, would they look down on him?

 

The Starling Girl: Doesn't quite fly

The Starling Girl (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated R, and too harshly, for mild sexuality

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang

Although the setting is unconventional, writer/director Laurel Parmet’s quiet character study focuses on a familiar theme: the coming-of-age saga of a young woman caught between community and parental expectations, and her desire for individuality and self-expression.

 

Jem (Eliza Scanlen, foreground center) is happiest while dancing, even if it's merely a
chaste "worship performance" during her community church service.

But although Eliza Scanlen delivers a richly nuanced starring performance — she’s well remembered as Beth March, in 2019’s Little Women — Parmet’s film too frequently feels as flat, lifeless and colorless as the enclave in which this story is set.

Seventeen-year-old Jem Starling (Scanlen), the eldest child of parents Paul and Heidi (Jimmi Simpson and Wrenn Schmidt), has grown up in an insular fundamentalist Christian community in rural Kentucky. Under the strict guidance of Pastor Taylor (Kyle Secor), everybody practices extreme patriarchal values: Men’s words are the words of God, and women must submit to them.

 

The story begins with a church service highlighted by a “worship dance” performed by Jem and several other teenage girls. They’re barefoot, dressed in the purity of white; arm movements are minimal and reserved, always reaching toward heaven.

 

Pastor Taylor is pleased. Moments later, though, Jem is humiliated and embarrassed when one of the other mothers chides her for wearing “the wrong kind of bra” … because, apparently, people can tell that she is wearing a bra.

 

(Constant Companion and I exchanged a puzzled look. Seriously?)

 

It quickly becomes clear that dance is Jem’s sole outlet: the one thing that allows her to express herself, however delicately. But this sets up a struggle within her soul, as she worries whether pride, and a desire to stand out, are at odds with her worship of God.

 

The dynamic shifts with the return of Pastor Taylor’s elder son, Owen (Lewis Pullman), and his wife Misty (Jessamine Burgum), who’ve been doing missionary work in Puerto Rico. Owen takes over as the community’s youth pastor; he’s charismatic, a bit rebellious and dangerously flirty.

 

Jem, meanwhile, has assumed a leadership role in the dance troupe: a position that makes several of the other girls quite catty, with sidelong comments that imply Jem has become too full of herself. That, too, is not the proper way to worship God.

 

Surprisingly, Owen insists that God wants Jem to enjoy and love dancing; this encouragement prompts Jem to embrace her performance instincts, and teach the troupe more expressive choreography.

 

Then, disturbingly, Owen’s attention becomes too up close and personal: a dangerous dynamic that catches Jem at the worst possible moment, while she’s already struggling with her developing sexuality.

 

The Little Mermaid: Waterlogged

The Little Mermaid (2023) • View trailer

2.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for dramatic intensity and some scary images

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.26.23

Following in the lamentable footsteps of 2017’s live-action Beauty and the Beast, which transformed its absolutely perfect animated predecessor into a 129-minute slog, this live-action update of 1989’s 83-minute charmer similarly has become an even more bloated 135-minute exercise in tedium.

 

When Prince Eric (Jonah Hauer-King) nearly drowns, following the loss of his ship,
Ariel (Halle Bailey) manages to save him, and drag him to shore.

I’ve no idea why Disney continues to tarnish the memory of these legacy classics, particularly when this one has been done so clumsily. The original Alan Menken/Howard Ashman song score has been “enhanced” with three new tunes by Menken and lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda, and — all due respect to the latter’s better credentials — the mis-match is glaring.

 

Worse yet, Miranda also added additional lyrics to several of Ashman’s existing songs, which were perfectly fine to begin with, thank you very much.

 

David Magee’s updated — and protracted — script apparently was designed to inject a new subtext of inclusiveness: a usually welcome theme which, alas, is delivered here with the subtlety of a sledge hammer. (I’m not one to scream “woke” at the drop of a fin, but good grief, folks; was the overkill really necessary?)

 

2021’s Luca handled this far more gracefully.

 

All of this is a shame, because Halle Bailey is sensational as this new film’s Ariel. She has terrific screen presence, a gorgeous — and powerful — singing voice, and an expressive face that conveys a wealth of emotion. The one saving grace of the otherwise tiresome second hour — which spends far too much time with Ariel navigating her human form in the prince’s castle — is the endearing charm of her muteness (having traded her voice for legs).

 

But that’s getting ahead of things. A quick recap, for newcomers:

 

Ariel, one of the seven daughters of King Triton (Javier Bardem, pompously grave), has long been fascinated by the intriguing trinkets and tchotchkes that occasionally fall overboard from passing ships (or, less happily, which she salvages from shipwrecks). This is a source of amusement to her best friends, Flounder the fish (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) and Sebastian the crab (Daveed Diggs), who also is Triton’s major-domo.

 

Whenever Ariel surfaces, in order to clandestinely observe the mysterious doings of these humans in their passing ships, her little gang is augmented by Scuttle (Awkwafina), a neurotic, dim-witted diving seabird who fancies herself an expert on All Things Human.

 

Still: All the right moves

Still (2023) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

This is very hard to watch.

 

Even so, director Davis Guggenheim’s quiet little documentary is impressively inspiring.

 

When asked to describe longtime companion Tracy Pollan in a single word,
Michael J. Fox replies, "Clarity."

We tend to compartmentalize memories of certain performers, during the height of their powers. Marilyn Monroe is forever immortalized with her dress wafting up in The Seven Year Itch; Fred Astaire is remembered for his dances with Ginger Rogers (notwithstanding his subsequent, equally successful career).

Michael J. Fox is cherished as the adorably brash kid who charmed us during seven seasons of TV’s Family Ties in the 1980s, concurrent with his explosive big-screen success with Back to the Future.

 

Watching him here, in the throes of full-blown Parkinson’s — a diagnosis he received at age 29 — is painful. Yet this is the way he wants his story told, in a documentary with a script he adapted from his four books, starting with 2002’s Lucky Man: A Memoir. He refuses to go quietly into that good night; he has been passionately public about coping with this disease, and equally dedicated to helping other sufferers.

 

To date, his Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, founded in 2000, has raised more than $2 billion, in great part because of his brave visibility.

 

But he wouldn’t call it “brave,” as this film makes abundantly clear. It’s simply the right thing to do.

 

More to the point, as he admits here, the diagnosis turned him into a “tough son of a bitch.”

 

Guggenheim’s approach is a clever blend of talking-head documentary — laden with liberal dollops of Fox’s often snarky and self-deprecating humor — archival footage and scripted elements. Clips from Fox’s many film and TV roles often “stand in” for actual dramatic moments during his life and career. The result is equal parts memoir and reflective “summing up” of a life lived not always perfectly, but ultimately nobly.

 

It’s all quite a feat, for an undersized Canadian high school dropout.

 

This film begins portentously, with a flashback to 1990, on the morning Fox woke in a Florida hotel and realized that the pinkie finger of one hand had taken on a life of its own. “It wasn’t my finger,” he recalls. “It belonged to somebody else.

 

“The trembling was a message from the future.”

Fast X: Over-revved lunacy

Fast X (2023) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for intense action violence and mild profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.19.23

This series has long verged on becoming a live-action cartoon, and the newest installment definitely crosses that line.

 

Physics, vehicular stamina and the frailty of the human body aren’t even an afterthought in director Louis Leterrier’s tenth (!) entry in this hard-charging franchise, but I’ll say this: He’s definitely the man for the job, having long ago helmed 2002’s enormously entertaining The Transporter and its 2005 sequel.

 

Confronted by a massive, spherical bomb rolling its way through the streets of Rome —
target: The Vatican — Dom and his comrades desperately try to re-route the threat.

This turbo-charged Fast escapade also gets plenty of momentum from a dog-nuts script by Dan Mazeau and Justin Lin, along with rat-a-tat editing by Dylan Highsmith and Kelly Matsumoto.

As an added bonus, Jason Momoa is a memorably and thoroughly reprehensible villain: a deranged, giggling sociopath prone to outré outfits and a mincing manner that make him even scarier. If he were granted a Snidely Whiplash mustache, I’m sure he’d twirl it with glee.

 

The story opens with a cleverly tweaked flashback to a key event in 2011’s Fast Five, as Dom (Vin Diesel) and his crew steal a massive bank vault laden with $100 million belonging to drug kingpin Herman Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida). Our heroes subsequently drag the vault through the streets of Rio de Janeiro, laying waste to everything in its path, until the audacious climax on the Teodoro Moscosco Bridge.

 

In this “adjusted” version of events, Reyes perishes on the bridge: a demise witnessed by his violently unbalanced adult son, Dante (Momoa), who barely survives.

 

(This sequence also allows us to spend a few minutes with the late Paul Walker’s Brian O’Connor, which is a nice — and respectful — touch.)

 

As things kick into gear in the present day, Dante — who has spent the intervening 12 years plotting revenge — orchestrates the first in an increasingly lethal series of attacks on everybody Dom holds dear. The goal is not to killDom — at least, not immediately — but to make him suffer the deaths of his friends and family, most particularly main squeeze Letty (Michelle Rodriguez) and their 8-year-old son, Little Brian (Leo Abelo Perry).

 

Meanwhile, Tej (Ludacris), Ramsey (Nathalie Emmanuel), Han (Sung Kang) and Roman (Tyrese Gibson) jet off to Rome, to handle a heist assigned by the clandestine U.S. government “Agency” that runs off-the-books operations, and until recently has been headed by the equally mysterious “Mr. Nobody” (Kurt Russell).

 

Back home in Los Angeles, Dom and Letty get an unexpected visitor: a badly wounded Cipher (Charlize Theron), the über-nasty who bedeviled our heroes in the series’ previous two installments, most notoriously when she killed Diplomatic Security Service Agent Elena (Elsa Pataky) while Dom watched. 

 

Letty would just as soon put a bullet between Cipher’s eyes, but the latter has just barely survived her own unpleasant encounter with Dante. In a nod to the old mantra — “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” — an uneasy truce is struck.

Peter Pan & Wendy: Fails to fly

Peter Pan & Wendy (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG, and too generous, despite violence, peril and child endangerment

Available via: Disney+

By Derrick Bang

On the one hand, Scottish novelist/playwright J.M. Barrie would be delighted to know that the characters he created, more than a century ago in a 1904 play, resonates strongly to this day.

 

Peter Pan (Alexander Molony, far left) and his new friends — from left, Wendy
(Ever Anderson), John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe) — carefully spy
on Captain Hook and his motley pirate crew.

On the other hand, I suspect Barrie would be horrified by the liberties that scripters David Lowery and Toby Halbrooks have taken, with respect to the key relationship between Peter Pan and his arch-nemesis, Captain Hook.

But although absurd, that isn’t this live-action film’s biggest problem.

 

Ever Anderson is excellent as Wendy Darling, but Alexander Molony’s Peter Pan is a sorry excuse for this “boy who never grew up.” Lowery — who also directs — fails to draw a credible performance from his young actor. Molony’s line deliveries are flat and uninspired, and he fails to project the mischievous spirit — the sense of magic — that is essential to this character.

 

Far too often, Molony seems disinterested: unwilling — or unable — to display more emotion than one would expect during a first-round script reading.

 

No matter how well everybody else performs, they can’t overcome this lack of a convincing Peter Pan.

 

That’s a shame, because in other respects — the Pan/Hook gaffe aside — Lowery and Halbrooks are faithful to many of the clever details Barrie wove into his play, while making subtle adjustments more appropriate to our 21st century.

 

The story begins in 1911, mid-Edwardian England, as 13-year-old Wendy laments her imminent departure to boarding school. Dismayed by the thought of no longer being able to play with younger brothers John (Joshua Pickering) and Michael (Jacobi Jupe), she defiantly proclaims that she doesn’t want to grow up.

 

That plea is heard by Peter, far away in Neverland; he immediately floats into the Darling children’s bedroom, accompanied by his fairy companion, Tinker Bell (Yara Shahidi). Peter first must capture his errant shadow, which Wendy sews back on with needle and thread, stabbing him slightly in the process. She soothes the pain by giving him a kiss (a thimble); he later reciprocates by giving her an acorn pendant (all details from Barrie’s play).

 

Thanks to an application of Tinker Bell’s sparkly pixie dust, Wendy, John and Michael are able to fly into the night sky, following Peter’s directions to head “second star to the right, and straight on ’til morning.” Daniel Hart and Oliver Wallace’s lush score swells at this point, with an orchestral echo of Sammy Cahn and Sammy Fain’s “You Can Fly! You Can Fly! You Can Fly!,” from Disney’s 1953 animated classic (a nice touch).

 

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: The fun is gone

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023) • View trailer

Three stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, and too generously, for nasty action violence, profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 5.5.23

Writer/director James Gunn has stamped his portion of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a sense of playful chaos that sets it apart from its numerous superhero colleagues.

 

Star Lord (Chris Pratt, center) and his companions — from left, Mantis (Pom Klementieff),
Groot (Vin Diesel), Drax (Dave Bautista) and Nebula (Karen Gillan) — prepare to face
yet another megalomaniac who wants to re-shape the universe.

But while some of that snarky atmosphere remains present, it’s blemished this time. The character roster has grown too large to grant proper attention to all concerned, and — more crucially — far too much time is spent with the helpless furry victims of vivisection gone horribly awry.

That latter subplot is necessitated by this third entry’s primary focus on Rocket, and the back-story that explains his bio-mechanical enhancements. (I hope nobody thought the MCU includes a planet populated by hyper-intelligent warrior raccoons.) 

 

It’s a solid topic, and two or three brief flashbacks would have been sufficient. But spending great chunks of time as young Rocket befriends three similarly imprisoned but atrociously mutilated critters feels like audience abuse, and leaches the “fun” right outta this film.

 

(If Gunn and co-writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning intended to make a point, they didn’t need a sledge hammer.)

 

The individual responsible for this horror is a longtime Marvel Comics villain dubbed the High Evolutionary, whose deplorable efforts in genetic manipulation date all the way back to a 1966 issue of The Mighty Thor. He’s played with malevolent fury here by Chukwudi Iwuji, and is genuinely scary.

 

But that’s getting ahead a bit. Events actually kick off with the explosive arrival of another familiar Marvel Comics character: golden-hued Adam Warlock (Will Poulter), a Superman-gone-bad who flies into Knowhere spaceport, current base of operations for the Guardians, and damn near takes out the entire team.

 

They are, by way of reminder, gung-ho Starlord, aka Peter Quill (Chris Pratt); the genetically enhanced Nebula (Karen Gillan), adopted daughter of the slain Thanos; the powerful but somewhat dim-bulb Drax (Dave Bautista); Mantis (Pom Klementieff), an empath able to sense and alter another’s emotions; and Groot (voiced by Vin Diesel), the hyper-intelligent, tree-like organism.

 

Along with Rocket (voiced by Bradley Cooper), who is critically injured during this initial, landscape-leveling battle with Warlock.

Rare Objects: A quiet little gem

Rare Objects (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and drug use

Available via: Amazon Prime and other streaming platforms

By Derrick Bang

This gentle, endearingly delicate character drama draws its heart from the Japanese art of kintsugi, wherein — when done properly — an object becomes more beautiful because it’s broken, and then lovingly repaired.

 

Benita (Julia Mayorga, left) happily joins Diana (Katie Holmes) for an impulsive
afternoon away from work.

The “object” in this case is Benita Parla (Julia Mayorga), a university student introduced on the day she leaves a New York psychiatric facility. She checked herself in some weeks (months?) earlier, not because of drugs or alcohol, but due to PTSD and anxiety.

The reason, as we gradually learn via fleeting flashbacks: She was raped in a trendy bar restroom, by a “nice guy” who, after flirty banter and several drinks, suddenly turned into a monster. “Tell anybody,” he breathes into her ear, following the assault, “and I’ll find you.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he whispers “I’m sorry” … as if that somehow makes up for the attack.

 

This isn’t actress Katie Holmes’ first time in the director’s chair, but it’s her best thus far … probably because she didn’t give the central role to herself. She also co-wrote the script with Phaedon A. Papadopoulos, based on Kathleen Tessaro’s 2016 novel of the same title. But it’s an adaptation in name and character dynamic only; very little remains of the book.

 

(That isn’t any sort of problem here, but one does wonder how Tessaro feels.)

 

Benita, having abandoned any thought of resuming college, returns to the tiny Queens apartment that she shares with her single mother, Aymee (Sandra Santiago), a Latin American immigrant who works hard to make ends meet. Benita hasn’t told her mother about what happened: a point we grasp not through any direct dialogue, but via inference. 

 

We eventually realize that going off to college in the first place likely was a point of friction between mother and daughter; Benita recognizes that admitting her recent crisis would merely validate her mother’s initial fears. 

 

Much of this story unfolds in precisely that manner, with Holmes and Papadopoulos trusting us to keep up, and fill in such gaps; that’s the hallmark of a sharp script. Credit also goes to Mayorga, who handles such scenes persuasively; her richly nuanced expressions and body language often tell us more than dialogue would.

 

Benita is at wit’s end: still fragile, haunted by the memory of her attack — the film reveals just enough, via those flashbacks, and avoids exploitation — and terrified by the burden of student loans coming due. Aymee is patient and encouraging, but chooses not to push. (I’m not sure that feels right, but it’s a minor quibble.)